Hi, What did I think of BETT?
The only open-source was SuSE (thanks Roger) and TurboLinux that I found although I understand I might have missed a stand. Texas
Maybe that's why Roger was standing in front with a cuddly Tux :)
Instruments are looking actively at producing a version of their TIinteractive for Linux and IBM via-voice is available in Ameringlish and in the US. They were good enough to share a corner with SuSE so I suppose we can say they support the concept! So where was Applix even if it does only seem to spell in Ameriglish; the only Corel Office was for 'doze, virtually nothing was web-based and many stands said, "the government don't specify it and none of the schools are asking for it."
Often a lot of the Windows stuff is a pig to deploy on networks too. i.e. you get told things to the effect of "we don't know what needs changing in C:\WINDOWS to get the program to work, but it's *easy* to just run the install program on every machine". (Let alone such stupidity as programs which need write access to files to be able to open them.) However good the program if it takes literally weeks to get installed then it's rather pointless. Since Linux applications don't have anything like the Windows registry and don't tend to want to overwrite /lib and /usr/lib this kind of hassle is far less likely to happen in the first place. Thus you can simply put the program somewhere on the file server which is shared to all workstations and fully expect it to work. This is possible with a few Windows programs, some more will work if you copy the appropriate DLL's through a login script but the time consuming ones require individual configuration of each workstation. (IME with the latter catagory often the software vendor dosn't have much of a clue about how Windows works in the first place.)
So, how about making a point of enquiring loudly if the stands are supporting open-source (they often haven't got a clue!) when some piece of useful software catches your eye? Becta was encouraging in their support for multi-platform approaches but Capita (SIMS/EMS) 1) didn't know what I was talking about and then 2) when someone did they don't expect to make any changes.
That's interesting. When did you ask them this? Since I spoke to them of Thursday complaining about their effectivly forcing the use of Windows NT for the next version of SIMS. The idea that the "S in "SQL" is "standard" appears to be beyond people... (Managed to get them to admit that their being a "Microsoft Solutions Provider" might render them less that impartial.) -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763